The Second Fiddle: Fearless Deputy

Hantu Laut

I couldn't agree more with Zaid.There are no two ways about it, there can only be one captain. Members of the cabinet are his crew and should behave like one.Those who tried to undermine him should have the sense of shame and should resign from the ministerial position.

Najib failed to put his foot down not only with his deputy but also his own cousin, the Home Minister, who had equally harmed the administration with his ridiculous political fatwas.Adding to the woes is Minister in the PM department Nazri Aziz who more often than not is more upsetting with his air of arrogance and incredulity.

I have in my previous postings indicated the need for reshuffling the cabinet, but unfortunately, Najib did not do the needful and now the problem has become too entranced.

The trouble with UMNO is the archaic political system where the deputy president of the party by convention would automatically become the deputy prime minister and successor to the prime minister.It begets sycophancy, cronyism and intensive lobbying with the DPM for those waiting for the next gravy train.Anwar Ibrahim was an example of a deputy in a hurry who stumbled and fell flat on his face because No.1 was smarter than he had expected.

I find it very upsetting that he would have made a good prime minister but succumbed to pressures from his subordinates that crippled him from pushing forward his policies.

Running a nation is no different from running a company, there can only be one ultimate boss, the head honcho.

How many of you know who is the deputy president of the US, the DPM of Britain and for that matter the DPM of our next door neighbour, Singapore? They know they can only play second fiddle and stay out of the limelight as deputy.

In the case of Pak Lah it was not Najib who pushed him out, much of the work was done by Tun Mahathir Mohammed and with some help from Muhyiddin.

The Fearless Deputy
Zaid Ibrahim

Aug 18, 2011

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Someone asked me if there is a power struggle going on in UMNO right now. I said no, only in the Cabinet. This poser was perhaps brought about by the way Deputy Prime Minister Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yassin has skilfully contradicted Prime Minister Dato’ Seri Najib Razak on several important issues. When the PM promoted the idea of 1Malaysia, the DPM countered with his now notorious statement: “I am Malay first”. It seems the PM didn’t know what to say in reply. Many people know that the PM would have liked Science and Mathematicsto continue to be taught in English (as it should be), but his Deputy, who is also Education Minister, decided otherwise.

Najib recently made another sensible decision to accommodate – or at least to recognise – some of the concerns raised by Bersih. He has decided that a Parliamentary Select Committee should look into the many complaints in the way elections are being conducted in our country. Not surprisingly, his Deputy quickly reminded him that very little was wrong with the process. It just needed a little “tweaking”, Muhyiddin said.

Now this is not the first time that a Minister in the Cabinet has openly challenged a PM in Malaysia. It happened even in the most recent administration before this one: when Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi was PM (this was soon after the 2008 General Election), Muhyiddin called on him to step down. He used the phrase “peralihan kepimpinan” — change of leadership. And he did so not once but many times. It was a sorry sight to hear Pak Lah telling Muhyiddin “sabar lah”. Be patient.

Muhyiddin was probably emboldened by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamed, who joined the fray and openly discredited and ridiculed the man he himself had endorsed to lead the country. I believe had Pak Lah reshuffled his cabinet post 2008 to show that the Cabinet was his, he would still be PM today. Sure enough, they took him out soon after.

In the Westminster system of Government, the PM is always the real power. The Cabinet are his advisors. This is why it’s normal for Prime Ministers in other Westminster-based countries to reshuffle their Cabinets whenever they feel that effective government will be compromised without such a change. The Prime Minister is responsible, as head of the ruling party, to make sure that the right policies are implemented. In an ideal situation, the Ministers serve to advise the PM on how these policies should be executed, and they bear responsibility for this.

When there is a charismatic or strong PM, Cabinets can sometimes become overshadowed and individual Ministers might resemble mere “extensions” of the PM’s will. We have seen it here for many years, and Dr Mahathir practised it to perfection. He would not even allow Tun Musa Hitam (the first of his many deputies) to share in the name of the administration: does anyone remember the “2M” Government?

In many ways Dr Mahathir was right. There can be only one captain of the ship. It is not for the PM to agree with his Ministers, but for the Ministers to carry out the vision of the PM in the form of policy. This is why any Minister who disagrees strongly enough with the PM over a particular decision or policy should resign, as I did. This is the convention practised in all Commonwealth countries.Read more.

Malaysia Gets Press Club

By Luke Hunt

It's been in the planning for decades. And despite being cleverly knocked on the head once by the Malaysia’s former Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, Kuala Lumpur finally has its own Foreign Correspondents Club (FCCM).

The club's first president, Romen Bose of Agence France-Presse, said after the inaugural meeting was held at the Equatorial Hotel that Malaysia was experiencing something of a media renaissance.

‘The idea of a foreign correspondents club in Malaysia isn’t new in that several groups had tried over the years to get one set up, and many had gone as far as having initial meetings and an executive committee drawn up, but were unable to get permission from the authorities.

‘The last time a group of journalists tried to set one up was in 1992 when then AFP bureau chief Mervin Nambiar and a group of very senior correspondents had banded together to push for the club to be set up, but the powers that be refused to allow its formation,’ he said.

Online media is flourishing in this country and challenging a repressed mainstream press. Prime Minister Najib Razak more recently has bowed to media reports and announced an inquiry into alleged electoral irregularities, the source of violent rallies in the capital in early July.

In doing this, he conceded the government’s censorship of an article in The Economist on the Bersih protest rally was ineffective and promised to review his country’s censorship methods.

‘If the international media wants to criticise us, let them. If we need to, we engage them. We give our side of story, and if they have crossed the line, then we have to resort to legal means,’ he said.

Foreign correspondents have traditionally found this country difficult territory in which to operate and are often widely disliked by local journalists who are coerced into toeing a management line while the outsiders are free to report as they see fit. This is largely because newspaper owners require a license to publish that must be renewed each year, resulting in coverage that’s heavily self-censored and primarily used to support government policies.

‘For too long, it was an easy out to say that the foreign media were not reporting the “real story” or were “twisting facts” or were “pro-opposition” when the reality of the matter was that the government newsmakers were unwilling or unable to engage foreign correspondents to provide their side of the story,’ Bose said.

As the paperwork from previous FCC bids languished on the mahogany desks of bureaucrats, one senior journalist was once pulled aside by Mahathir. Dismayed, the then prime minister asked: ‘Why do you want to establish a Foreign Correspondents Club here when if you have any problems you can always come and talk to me personally?’

It possibly never dawned on the leader that such cosy relations between the media and the executive arm of government was considered anathema to foreign journalists, who were also disturbed by the sycophantic relations encouraged by the government and state-linked press.Read more.

The Uncivil Servants

Hantu Laut

Shocking! Civil servants with no civility and respect for the public.Are they qualified to do the job?

Why is there a need to haul up the photographer? Which law has she broken?Is this country China or worse North Korea where such things are not tolerated? Have they never heard of "civil rights"?

Do they know why they are called civil servants and the meaning of the word "civil" ? Lest they forget they are public servants paid by the public to serve the public.

"Saya yang menurut perintah" is a joke, a falsidical paradox, absoletism that should have been dropped and replaced with " Saya yang memerintah." which is exactly what the civil servants think they are, masters not servants.

" Saya yang menurut perintah" is not exactly the same as "I am your obedient servant" a relic of of the colonial administration.

The Malay version is intentionally made ambiguous.It can mean following orders from the top not from the pathetic public.

This is the kind of uncivil behaviour by a few bad apples that's killing the Najib's administration and tarnished the whole civil service.

Since they have poor public relations such officers should be taken off dealing with the public and given desk jobs.

A civil action against those MCMC officers is justified.


Video below:



Full story here.

London Riots' Racial Blame Game

A former member of parliament, now, running for mayor of Birmingham, writes an anguished account of the riots that have ravaged Britain.

Few British mosques are places of mosaic or minaret. They are not fine buildings from which muezzins call. They are the adapted back rooms or upstairs quarters of working-class Muslims. The carpet I sat on in the Handsworth district of Birmingham on Aug. 10 was woven through with a religious motif, but was threadbare.

I was part of a circle of 20 barefoot men, their palms turned upward in front of their chests, making their dua for two brothers killed in “riots” the night before. The prayers were now led by the murdered men’s uncle, replacing their father, who was ushered away in distress.

Between prayers, the men took sober phone calls, talked mutedly, and sent text messages. A surviving brother, sobbing, wandered in and out. Outside, a crowd of young Kashmiri men milled. Some were in traditional dress, some in suits, most in the universal uniform of American hip-hop.

Fourteen hours earlier, at 1 a.m., the two brothers, along with a third man, had been “protecting their community” on the streets of Birmingham’s multiethnic Winson Green district. The night before had seen attacks on shops and looting in the city center and nearby Soho Road. As trouble seemed, on the second night, to be moving in their direction, Sajad, Haroon, and Abdul were part of a large group “defending” their area. In the chaos, a suspected looter drove his car directly at them. All three were killed. A 32-year-old man was almost immediately arrested on suspicion of murder.

This is my city. I grew up here. I love the place. I sat for nine years in the House of Commons as member of Parliament for the Erdington district of Birmingham. Last year I stood down in order to campaign for, and ultimately to campaign to be, our first directly elected mayor.

As a practicing politician in a city gripped by disorder, I find this article difficult to write. I have privileged access to private situations, afforded to me on the basis that I might help, not so that I can write it up in NEWSWEEK. But telling the story so widely is another unusual privilege. So I take the risk.

From the family of the dead brothers I went to a small, closed meeting of Afro-Caribbean community leaders called by one of the city’s two Muslim M.P.s, Khalid Mahmood. They are frightened. The man arrested on suspicion of the murders was black. Facebook is heavy with young Kashmiris venting fury and threatening reprisals. “We will take three blacks for the three that was took from us” is one message reported by a veteran community activist. She says it is the most scared she has been for 30 years.

Overlaid onto the fear of reprisals is the worry that such threats by themselves will provoke a response from gang-influenced Afro-Caribbean men.

"The rioters are not furious or alienated. They are bored.", Kerim Okten / EPA-Corbis

That would be a massive escalation because, hitherto, this nationwide civil unrest has been largely the work of children. The marauding bands that set London alight and shut down town centers across Britain were made up, unprecedentedly, of often very young teenagers. This has not been an uprising of the dispossessed, the unemployed, or particular ethnic groups, but a violent convulsion of kids on holiday from high school. According to the Metropolitan Police, just under two thirds of those arrested on the second day of the London disturbances were teenagers. Many were 13, 14, 15 years of age. Everyone who saw them was shocked.

“They were just kids, not more than 15,” the owner of a wrecked mobile-phone shop in Birmingham told me while waiting for the police to arrive in the cold light of that Tuesday morning. “The scarf covering his face fell down and I couldn’t believe it—he was so young,” said Miles Weaver, a young academic watching from the window of his city-center apartment as a gang looted a shop in the small hours of Tuesday night.Read more.